Backlash grows against VA AG Cuccinell’s anti-gay dictates

Last week, Virginia’s Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli started pushing his anti-gay agenda at the state’s colleges and universities. In Cuccinelli’s theocratic world, homophobia is an operating principle. In the real world, it’s not. And, that’s especially true for younger people:

Students at Virginia Commonwealth University, one of the few in the state not on break, planned a rally for noon Wednesday, with several hundred students committed. At Christopher Newport University, student Republican and Democratic leaders will discuss their next steps at a bipartisan meeting Friday.

“I’ve never gotten so many e-mails from students wanting to do something,” said Brandon Carroll, 21, president of the student government at Virginia Tech. He said any erosion in gay rights at state universities is “going to make us lose top students. It’s going to make us lose top faculty.”

A growing number of industry leaders have also lined up against the directive from Cuccinelli (R), some portraying it as a threat to the quality and competitiveness of Virginia’s higher-education system.

For Cuccinelli and his ilk, losing competitiveness and quality aren’t a concern. They’re too obsessed with hating the gays.

Last fall during the campaign, we wrote several posts about Cuccinelli. I don’t think people in the state realized how extreme he was:

It sure sounds like Cuccinelli would use his office to criminalize “homosexual acts”:

[Cuccinelli] declined to commit to a nondiscrimination policy against gays and lesbians observed by former Attorney General Bob McDonnell: “ My view is that homosexual acts, not homosexuality, but homosexual acts are wrong. They’re intrinsically wrong. And I think in a natural law based country it’s appropriate to have policies that reflect that. … They don’t comport with natural law. I happen to think that it represents (to put it politely; I need my thesaurus to be polite) behavior that is not healthy to an individual and in aggregate is not healthy to society.”

Ken Cuccinelli wants to be the top law enforcement official in Virginia.

Joe Sudbay
On October 27, 2010, Joe was one of five bloggers who interviewed President Obama. Joe is a DC-based political consultant with over twenty-five years of experience at both the state and federal level. Joe has managed political operations and legislative efforts for both candidates and issues-based organizations. For seven years, he was the Director of State Legislation at Handgun Control, Inc. He served as that organization's first Political Director during the 2000 cycle. Joe is a graduate of the University of Maine School of Law. In addition, he has a Masters in Public Administration from Lehigh University and received his B.A. from the University of New Hampshire. Joe also has a fun dog, Petey, a worthy successor to Boomer, who got Joe through eight years of Bush and Cheney. Joe likes to think he is a world class athlete having finished the 2005 Chicago Marathon in the time of 4:10. He has completed six other marathons as well -- and is still determined to break the four hour mark.